G. Kenneth Bishop, From Horses to Horsepower: How Goods Got and Get to Market. (Carlisle: 250'" Anniversary Committee, 2000). 16 pp. Paperback $2.00 (This edition limited to 250 copies.)
For the compulsive researcher, this booklet is a catalyst. A survey of industry and transportation in Cumberland County from the 1730s to the present, it is a handy compendium of scattered secondary sources. A bibliography at the end points the way to further reading.
There is here an appreciation for the uncited sources of the older chroniclers. After quoting I. D. Rupp's statistics about businesses in Carlisle, Bishop observes, "Rupp took this inventory about 1840 or copied it from the 1840 census, or took it from William Robert Milner's inventory of valley businesses for the Cumberland Valley Railroad." Bishop understands the frustration caused by the classics in the field of county history failing to note their sources. Bishop's model seems to be Robert J. Smith's history of Penn Township, as published in the Winter, 1985, issue of this journal.
Geography and human ambition have combined to make the Cumberland Valley a center for commerce. Bishop briefly bur deftly sketches the development of Indian paths into asphalt thoroughfares, with railways intersecting, bur never replacing them. "Over one-third of the nation's population, " he records, "is located within five hundred miles of our borders, and three major interstate highways juncture within the county." These facts, he adds, make Cumberland County "the most favorable geographic site for distribution to the largest regional population in the United States." With spare, straightforward prose Bishop tells this important story, one that is often overlooked or looked down upon. He clearly sees that before mills and barns were subjects for doctoral research, they were places of work and business.
Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2000). xxiii, 862, illustrated, maps, index. Hardcover $40.00 (ISBN 0-375-40642- 5); Paperback (New York: Vintage Books, 2001) $20.00 (ISBN 0-375- 70636-4)